One section of the book had been especially heavily annotated. It was titled ‘The Eaters and the Eaten’, and it dealt with primitive customs relating to human communities and their local predators. Some hunter clans in the wilderness worlds of the Halo Stars ritually ate the flesh of apex predators in the belief that this would both proof them against predation and invest them with the traits of the killer creatures. On Salique, tribesmen drank the blood of local crocodilians so as to share their cunning. On Gudrun, in ages past, the powdered teeth and genitals of the giant carnodon were believed to imbue the ingester with feral potency. It was a recurring theme. Wherever man inhabited a world where he was in competition with a significant apex predator, rituals of devouring evolved. Eat what would otherwise eat you, and you would be magically protected. Hunt and consume what you fear will hunt and consume you, and you would be proofed against its fanged jaws.

This was nothing new to Titus Endor. His painful experiences on Brontotaph as an interrogator had taught him much about these curious beliefs. After his clash with the saurapt, an encounter he’d never care to repeat, the local tribes had treated him with the utmost respect. He had been ‘in the jaws’ and he had survived. This made him special in their eyes, as if some curious supernatural relationship had been forged between man and predator. They were bound together, both eaters, both eaten. The tribesmen had urged Endor to hunt down the saurapt, kill it and ingest its flesh, so as to become master of the compact.

Endor had laughed this off and refused. The old superstitions were ridiculous. ‘But the saurapt will now stalk you forever,’ the tribesmen had warned, ‘to the end of your days, when it will claim you at last and finish its bite.’

Finish its bite. Quite a phrase. It had made Hapshant laugh. Endor had relished the notion of a predator’s bite that took years, decades perhaps, to close entirely.

Many notes, most of them hard to decipher, appended the passages dealing with such traditions. Brontotaph was mentioned. Certain charms and prophylactic rituals were described, whereby sacrifices could be made to ward off the stalking killer. Fresh blood and surrogate victims could be offered up to stall the attentions of invisible beasts.

Endor wondered about the tooth he’d found in Mira Zaleed’s jewellery box.

‘Are you Endor?’

Titus looked up from his eggs. It took him a moment to recognise the barman from the zendov club.

‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.

‘May I?’ the barman asked, indicating the other chair.

‘Please.’

The barman sat down. He was in casual clothes, a white shirt under a striped coat. Endor imagined the man’s formal wear was being pressed somewhere in a backstreet laundry.

‘Master Endor,’ the barman began, ‘Mira wants you to know that–’